Supports/Surfaces is Alive and Well

Installation view of
'Supports/Surfaces is Alive and Well'
Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles
January 18 - March 15, 2014

Cherry and Martin is pleased to present works by Jennifer Boysen and Noam Rappaport in context with pieces from the radical French painting movement Supports/Surfaces. In addition to artists like Louis Cane, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, and Claude Viallat, all of whom were directly connected to Supports/Surfaces, the show will present important works by intriguing figures like Jean-Michel Meurice and Pierre Buraglio.

Supports/Surfaces developed away from Paris, in the south of France - the home of Matisse. Early exhibtions took place in towns like Coaraze, Montpellier, Nimes and Nice in the mid-1960s. After the student revolts of 1968, the movement ratcheted up its activities, exploding in such exhibtions as "Supports/Surfaces," which took place at ARC in Paris in September 1970. These shows occurred at or around the same time as those of other French artist groups like GRAV and BMPT (Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni). Like them, Supports/Surfaces questioned the role of painting as both an art object and a social one.

As its name suggests, Supports/Surfaces was interested in articulating what its artists felt were all too readily ignored aspects of painting: basic concepts like 'support' and 'surface,' for example, and the presence of painting as a product of individual labor. At the same time, these artists were very much interested in painting and its own peculiar history. Daniel Dezeuze points out that he was looking for a means of “revolting against the art world and the world in general without having to make anti-art.” (Raphael Rubinstein, Polychrome Profusion: Selected Art Criticism: 1990 – 2002.) In fact, those involved with Supports/Surfaces, as Rubinstein also notes, were some of the few French artists of the period to engage directly with American Painting from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field, albeit doing so within the context of their Maoist discourse.

Jennifer Boysen and Noam Rappaport are two young Los Angeles-based artists whose work also points directly to the terms of painting and the fact of its own making. Boysen's work crafts deep and rich painterly atmospheres, at times reminiscent of Olitski, on canvases stretched over found objects. Rappaport explores a range of solutions for investigating line and shape, color and form, including irregularly shaped canvases and physically stacked planes. Both artists have contributed new works to the exhibition.

Cherry and Martin is open Tuesday through Saturday 10-6 and by appointment. For more information, or images, please contact the gallery: info@cherryandmartin.com, or 310-559-0100.